High-Resolution Mangrove Forests Classification with Machine Learning Using Worldview and UAV Hyperspectral Data

Abstract

Mangrove forests, as important ecological and economic resources, have suffered a loss in the area due to natural and human activities. Monitoring the distribution of and obtaining accurate information on mangrove species is necessary for ameliorating the damage and protecting and restoring mangrove forests. In this study, we compared the performance of UAV Rikola hyperspectral images, WorldView-2 (WV-2) satellite-based multispectral images, and a fusion of data from both in the classification of mangrove species. We first used recursive feature elimination‒random forest (RFE-RF) to select the vegetation’s spectral and texture feature variables, and then implemented random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) algorithms as classifiers. The results showed that the accuracy of the combined data was higher than that of UAV and WV-2 data; the vegetation index features of UAV hyperspectral data and texture index of WV-2 data played dominant roles; the overall accuracy of the RF algorithm was 95.89% with a Kappa coefficient of 0.95, which is more accurate and efficient than SVM. The use of combined data and RF methods for the classification of mangrove species could be useful in biomass estimation and breeding cultivation.